Originally published at American Thinker

I’ve been a committed conservative and, with the exception of one year where I listed myself as an independent, a registered Republican since 1978. What makes that rather unremarkable statement more intriguing is that I’m an American who happens to be black.

Anyone who follows politics knows that puts me in rare and sometimes lonely company. Black voting percentages for the Republican nominee for President since 1964 are typically in the single digits, reaching 11% nationwide in 2004 and, perhaps more significantly, 16% in Ohio, helping George W. Bush take that state and the Presidency for a second term. There is no single demographic group in the nation that is more loyal and, in my opinion, more taken for granted by the beneficiaries of their votes than blacks.

Until February 10, 2007, most of my black friends and associates tolerated my status as a conservative and Republican, dismissing me as a novelty or something less flattering but essentially harmless. After that date, and especially after the Iowa caucuses in the 2008 Presidential election, I became an enemy and someone who needed to be silenced at all costs.

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On a hot August day in Lubbock, Texas, with my mother, grandmother and future wife present, I took the oath of commissioning to become a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force.

On that day, I swore "that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

At the time, I knew who the foreign enemies were, and I devoted over nine years of my life to defending my nation and its way of life from the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, and rogue nations in the Middle East like Libya and Iraq.

I presumed the only domestic enemies of the Constitution were radicals and extremists who were well outside the mainstream of American thought.

Over time, however, I came to understand that anyone who sought to advance the power of government over the individual was an enemy of the Constitution.

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